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Accounting for amenities and regulating ecosystem services of urban trees. Testing a combined field protocol for VAT19 and i-Tree Eco valuation methods

Nollet, A., Barton, D.N., Cimburova, Z. & Often, A. 2021. Accounting for amenities and regulating ecosystem services of urban trees. Testing a combined field protocol for VAT19 and i-Tree Eco valuation methods. NINA Report 1948. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Monetary valuation of the...

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Published in:NINA Report 2021
Main Authors: Nollet, Alexandre, Barton, David A, Cimburova, Zofie, Often, Anders
Format: Report
Language:English
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Summary:Nollet, A., Barton, D.N., Cimburova, Z. & Often, A. 2021. Accounting for amenities and regulating ecosystem services of urban trees. Testing a combined field protocol for VAT19 and i-Tree Eco valuation methods. NINA Report 1948. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Monetary valuation of the ecosystem services provided by urban trees can contribute to general awareness-raising about the importance of trees, cost-benefit analysis of tree investments, prioritization of management measures and damage compensation calculations. This report provides support for the standardization of tree valuation methods in Norway. Until 2019, Norwegian tree assessors typically used the Danish Verdsetting af Trær (VAT03) method, which accounts for several aspects of amenities and recreational ecosystem services. Updated in 2019, the VAT19 guidelines have extended their scope to consider the valuation of regulating ecosystem services through expert assessment. In this sense, the implementation of an integrated protocol which contains both amenities and regulating ecosystem services could serve the valuation of urban trees and help to determine the places where a planted tree is the most valuable. However, in the VAT19 field methodology, there is no explicit link to the i-Tree Eco model, which is the dominant way to assess regulating ecosystem services. Furthermore, the current VAT19 method does not make use of available geospatial data which can be used to model tree variables (e.g. tree crown dimensions). The aim of this study is therefore to develop, test and document a cost-effective and sufficiently accurate field protocol for the assessment of variables that can be then used in the VAT19 and i-Tree Eco valuation methods. We call this combined field protocol the VAT19-i-Tree field protocol. To ensure its cost-effectiveness, we assessed each field variable in terms of its contribution to the tree compensation value and the ease of recording it in a field survey, to retain only a limited number of key field variables. In addition, we assess which field variables could potentially be modelled using geospatial analyses. We then test the combined field protocol by conducting a field survey on a sample of trees in Oslo and by demonstrating the calculation of compensation value for trees within this sample. Finally, we use a Bayesian belief network to assess uncertainty within subjective expert assessments. Future research should address limitations of the resulting VAT19-i-Tr